I talked briefly about some of the shortcomings of the widget admin in 2.5 in a previous post, and the more I work with and investigate the widget admin in WordPress 2.5, the more I find to be disgruntled about. It may be prettier, but from a user standpoint, it is a quantum leap backwards in UI (user interface) design and WordPress needs to fix it, and I’m not talking about in six months or whenever 2.6 comes out, I’m talking about making a substantial improvement in 2.5.1.

To give you an idea of what you are going to experience with 2.5, here is a couple comparisons of the steps require to move one and two text widgets to another sidebar in 2.5 vs. 2.3.x. 

Moving one text widget from one sidebar to another in 2.3.x

1. Go to presentation > widgets
2. Drag text widget from one sidebar to the other
3. Click “Save Changes”

Moving one text widget from one sidebar to another in 2.5

1. Go to design > widgets
2. Click on the text widget edit link
3. Copy the content of the widget to the clipboard
4. Click the remove button
5. Click the “Save Changes” button
6. Select the target sidebar from the pulldown
7. Click Show
8. Click “Add” on the text widget bar in available widgets
9. Click edit on the text widget in the sidebar panel
10. Paste the content into the widget text area
11. Reenter the title (if one is desired)
12. Click “Change”
13. Click “Save Changes”

Moving two text widgets from one sidebar to another in 2.3.x                

1. Go to presentation > widgets
2. Drag the first text widget from one sidebar to the other
3. Drag the second text widget from one sidebar to the other
4. Click “Save Changes”

Moving two text widgets from one sidebar to another in 2.5 

1. Open a new plain text file
2. Go to design > widgets
3. Click on the first text widget edit link
4. Copy the content of the first widget and paste into the text file
5. Click the remove button
6. Click on the second text widget edit link
7. Copy the content of the second widget and paste into the text file
8. Click the remove button
9. Click the “Save Changes” button
10. Select the target sidebar from the pulldown
11. Click Show
12. Click “Add” twice on the text widget bar in available widgets
13. Click edit on the first text widget in the sidebar panel
14. Copy the text for the first widget from the text file and paste into the text widget
15. Reenter the title (if one is desired)
16. Click “Change”
17. Click “Save Changes”
18. Click edit on the second text widget in the sidebar panel
19. Copy the text for the second widget from the text file and paste into the text widget
20. Reenter the title (if one is desired)
21. Click “Change”
22. Click “Save Changes”
23. Save or close the text file you used

I knew it was a lot more work, but even I didn’t realize just how much more until I actually wrote it out step by step. I have a couple of suggested solutions. The first would be an improvement, but would still not make working with widgets as easy as it was in 2.3.x. The second is the preferred solution, but may not be possible until the next major revision (2.6). The above also applies to any widget where you are allowed multiple occurrences, such as the RSS widget.

Bare Minimum: Have the text and RSS entries under available widgets pulldowns (or a +/- button to expand into a list) so that you could select which text or RSS widget you wanted to use. Since the title bar of the widgets displays the title you entered, it would then be easy to select the correct one to use. You could also put a burnt orange bullet or dot at the beginning of the title text in the pulldown to indicate that the widget had content. This would help with widgets in which there is no title. This of course will only work if the title and content of the widgets are kept in the database when not in use, and it appears that it is because I can switch from a three-column to a two-column theme and back and the three-column theme will still have all my text widget content.

Preferred Solution: Redesign the entire widget admin page and bring back the display of all of the sidebars, and bring back the ability to drag and drop from one sidebar to another. Again, the available widgets panel should have pulldowns or an expandable list for any widget type that allows multiple occurrences. If this cannot happen until 2.6, then at least implement the “Bare Minimum” since the way it is now is completely ridiculous.

My general impression of 2.5 is good. It is not perfect, but it is quick, stable and a definite upgrade from 2.3.x, but the widget admin is certainly a downgrade. I really, really hope WordPress gives this some serious thought and some big love.

For now, before upgrading to 2.5, create a text file and copy and paste all of the stuff you have in any text widget now in use or parked in the available widgets area into a text file and save it, because once you upgrade, all the stuff in the text widgets in your available widget area will no longer be accessible, and once you remove any text widget from your sidebar, the stuff it contains will no longer be accessible either.